Lando Norris opens up on McLaren controversy after Oscar Piastri’s maiden win

Lando Norris has waded into the controversy between himself and teammate Oscar Piastri after the Aussie’s spectacular debut win.

Lando Norris has waded into the controversy between himself and teammate Oscar Piastri after the Aussie’s spectacular debut win.

Lando Norris has claimed he was always going to hand over the lead of the Hungarian Grand Prix to Oscar Piastri, despite 20 laps of heated radio chatter with McLaren’s pit wall.

Norris, who snatched pole after a blinding lap on Saturday, lost the lead to his teammate at the first corner, but regained it after McLaren strategically pitted him first to counter a potential undercut by Lewis Hamilton.

Piastri, who stopped three laps after Norris, was assured he’d regain his position. However, despite repeated team radio instructions, Norris widened the gap and only relinquished the lead with three laps remaining after a series of tense messages.

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“I know what I’m going to do, I know what I’m not going to do,” Norris explained, reflecting on the incident that some say overshadowed Piastri’s first F1 win.

“Of course, I’m going to question it and challenge it, and that’s what I did.”

“I was going to wait until the last lap, the last corner but then they said if there was a Safety Car all of a sudden then I couldn’t let Oscar go through, it would have made me look like a bit of an idiot. Then I was like, ‘yeah, it’s a fair point’. And straight away I let him go.”

Norris insisted that the back-and-forth with race engineer Will Joseph wouldn’t have been necessary if McLaren had pitted Piastri first. Norris admitted he didn’t deserve the win.

“I know that I always was going to give it back unless they changed their mind on what they were saying and they didn’t, so all good,” he added.

“I got put into the lead rather than wanting to. We made things way too hard for ourselves. We should have just boxed Oscar first and things would have been simple. But they gave me the lead and I gave it back. So I shouldn’t have won today. I didn’t deserve to win because of my start and Oscar’s good start. That’s that.”

Winner Team McLaren-Mercedes' Oscar Piastri celebrates on the podium.

Lando Norris has claimed he was always going to hand over the lead of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Norris said it was painful to give another victory after missed opportunities at Silverstone and Austria.

Norris said it was painful to give another victory after missed opportunities at Silverstone and Austria.

“It’s tough,” he told Sky Sports F1.

“It would be tough for anyone when you’re leading the race to give it up. They made me box first and gave me the chance to lead the race and pull away quite comfortably and to do what I was doing. They also gave me the opportunity to do so. Therefore, I think it was fair to give the position back. I don’t want to come across as the guy who is not fair.

“Oscar has done a lot for me in the past and helped me in many races. He drove a better race than I did. He got a good start, a better start and mine sucked. He deserved it and it was the right thing to do. It hurts any time you’re going to give away a win and give it to someone. I know I shouldn’t have had it in the first place, which is I think the main point.”

Oscar Piastri is now an F1 race winner.

Norris admitted he didn’t deserve the win.

Norris’ late concession allowed Piastri, who qualified second on the grid, to celebrate his first grand prix victory, becoming the seventh different driver to win this season.

Piastri maintained that swapping the cars was the “fair” thing to do and expressed trust in his McLaren teammate.

“I had a lot of trust in the team and Lando,” Piastri told Sky Sports F1. “Lando was fast at the end, that was clear, but the strategies we went onto meant it was effectively an undercut for him and I think it was a fair decision to swap us back at the end. We discussed a lot last night and this morning about how the race would look.

“We were free to race each other and both try to win the race as long as we finished one and two and I think that’s more or less what we did. I think a lot of really good planning, a lot of good discussions and open discussions allowed us to have a lot of trust and respect for each other and not have to worry about situations like this.”

Originally published as Lando Norris opens up on McLaren controversy after Oscar Piastri’s maiden win